By Daniel Turtel

Our doctor’s voice is quiet: “And how long has it been since you’ve felt movement?”

My wife holds the phone to her ear with both hands; my ear is down against her belly.

“Since morning,” she says.

“And usually—”

“Quite active. I mean, responsive. To food and music. To her father’s voice.”

“And today—”

“Nothing.”

I turn my head so that my lips are against the skin. 

“Do you want to respond to your father’s voice?” I say. It is like praying. “Do you want to hear your father’s voice and give a kick? Would you do that…”

I don’t use her name. We’ve been warned not to use her name, but have insisted that we aren’t superstitious, that we won’t give in to old wives’ tales, that we will embroider it on blankets, host a shower, use it early and often, as if she is already here. 

“What I want you to do,” the doctor says, “is drink a tall glass of cold orange juice. Then wait thirty minutes. Usually that gets them right moving.”

“And then what?”

“And then probably you’ll call and tell me you feel a bit silly, and everything is fine.”

“And what if,” begins my wife, but doesn’t finish. “Alright. Thirty minutes?”

“Thirty minutes. And a tall glass. And cold.”

I’m already pulling my shoes on, but my wife says, “I’ll go.”

She always says she’ll go, and usually she means it. She is allergic to letting others do anything for her. But now they are only words, and she doesn’t move from the couch. I go. It is wonderful to go, to feel the cold night air against my face; it is wonderful to run, to find, to buy, to do something. To return.

As I round the corner back, there is a racoon at our gate, standing between me and the house. It is looking up at the lights, like the priest’s shadow on The Exorcist movie posters. Then it turns to me and bares its fangs. It hisses. The neighbor’s Christmas lights are reflected in its eyes, and against the mocking pale gray tongue of the sidewalk behind it, the thing’s ears in silhouette are like a pair of horns. 

My fist strangles the neck of the bottle of juice. If only there was some toothed demon to fight, something with glowing eyes to stick a knife into. But the demon is stillness, and its claws are the ticking of a clock. How do you fight time? By wasting it. If I stand here, perhaps when I get back…but there is the shadow of my wife in the window. The racoon has moved on—how long ago? How long have I been standing here, doing battle with the plastic neck in my fist?

“Was there something more important out there,” my wife says when I get in, “something more important than…” but trails off as I peel the safety seal off the juice and hand it to her. Once she’s done, she says: “You got pulp. I hate pulp.”

“They didn’t have—”

“It doesn’t matter.”

She sits down again, and I sit down and put my hand against the round. It is as still and useless as a wizard’s crystal ball.

“What time did we start?” I say after how long, I don’t know.

“What? You didn’t check the time?”

“Thirty juice from, call it ten-twenty.” I shake my head. “I mean, thirty minutes.”

It takes her a moment to smile; it is a ghost of a smile, like when I lean over to kiss her in the morning and I wonder how she knows that I am there. Will I kiss her any more?

“Twenty juice left,” she says, opening her eyes and finding mine.

Is this the last joke that will be made in this house for God-knows-how-long? Is it the last joke that will be made between us, ever? It is impossible not to think it.

“Ten juice.”

Demons, rats, racoons, I pray. Give me a scratching in the walls, a clawed fist against the door, some Mephisto spinning himself out of the shadow on the wall. Give me something to chase after, something to trap, to kill, to exterminate, to exorcize.

“Was that?—” I ask.

“A hiccup.”

She says it harshly, in a way she never speaks to me. Are things so changed already? I close my eyes and see the demon face of the raccoon. It is laughing. What did you think, it says, that you could use the name, trample superstition, spit in God’s face? You don’t believe in God, but now you’ll see that a thing you don’t believe in can destroy you, just as you’ll see that a thing you believed in very much, a thing you knew to exist, can go poof—just like that!—and be gone.

Shut up, I say—he is whispering her name!—shut up, shut up—

“Are you telling me to—” says my wife.

“Sorry,” I say. “I was thinking out loud.”

“Thinking of telling me to—”

“Not you,” I say.

“Oh,” she says. She nods, somehow understands. Her fingers slide down along her belly and find my hand. Something is trembling, I don’t know where from, or of what motor. I pray, promise, repent, think of things that I’ll give up.

“One juice,” she says, a whisper.

My fingers are spread wide against her belly. My wife’s heart pounds, my fingers shake. The pounding and the shaking lend movement to the skin, stretched as round and as covered as a retired crystal ball–mute of prophecy, blind to future, cloth-covered and gathering dust. The pounding and the shaking let the stretched skin borrow our pulse, and in the spilling, silent time, won’t she keep that frantic rhythm?